On My Mind

“So I was talking to our coach about it, and, like—he didn't even know that we were supposed to be playing in that tournament, so we had to drop out of it—we weren't even close to being ready to play, you know? And then the coach of one of the teams from the tourney asked if we wanted to play a game, anyway—so he decided this weekend would be better...”

Kaia nodded along, letting Maggie ramble while she searched for a parking spot in the crowded lot. There was supposed to be a youth tournament in the morning that would clear out for the Pitt game in the afternoon. “Is here fine?”

Maggie paused mid-sentence to glance outside of the car, and then nodded. “Thanks for coming, Kai.”

“Dude, you come to all my games,” Kaia said, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “Plus, this is a big one. First match.”

“I'm so nervous,” Maggie said, emitting something that sounded like it should have been a laugh as she climbed out of the car. She pulled a gear bag over her shoulder, stopping to stare up at the sky. “There are so many people coming to this, Kai, like—I can't screw up.”

“You're the captain, you have to be nervous,” Kaia said smoothly, holding out a hand to take some of her things. “It's your first game. And your first season as a team. It's fine.”

The two walked together toward the entrance, their shoulders bobbing against each other. They were roommates, and best friends, having met when they were freshman and lived across the hall from each other in one of Pitt's ancient dorms. They were almost exact opposites: Maggie loud and dramatic, standing a hair below 6'0” with dark hair, dark eyes and tanned skin, the kind of girl that Kaia had always thought could have been a model; and Kaia was quiet, shy, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, standing 5'3” on the days that she didn't slouch. Somehow, they came together perfectly, and had lived together since they were sophomores in an apartment a few blocks from campus. Kaia played soccer; Maggie played hockey, and had spent years playing for a women's team in downtown Pittsburgh. The year before, Maggie had put together a club team that the school sponsored, and they were heading into their first real season that fall.

“Here we go,” Maggie muttered, pushing the door open for her friend. “All of the seats are open, you can sit wherever you want, really—I don't think it matters—”

“Mags, it's fine,” Kaia promised, and nodded toward the locker room doors. “Go! Puck drops in half an hour.”

Kaia watched Maggie disappear into the locker room, and then headed for the bleachers, climbing past a few leftover families to get a seat a few rows from the top. She settled in, pulling her sweatshirt—in signature Pitt navy and gold—tighter around her shoulders. She knew a little about hockey from watching and going to Maggie's games, but hardly enough to understand, even despite Maggie's attempted explanations. Kaia's family wasn't a “hockey family,” like Maggie had always called it; her three older brothers had all played soccer, and they were the ones that had taught her how to play when she was younger.

Students started filling in the spaces where families had been before, most of them wearing Pitt colors, heading for the seats closest to the ice. Kaia watched them file in absentmindedly, trying to look busy on her phone. She was thankful that none of them sat next to her—there were a few familiar faces, boyfriends of girls on the team or friends that she had met at parties, but none of her real friends; she didn't feel like making fake conversation with any of them, avoiding their eyes. The only person that caught her attention was someone that came just before the national anthem was sung, dressed in dark clothes, who shuffled up to her area of the bleachers and sat back against the wall, a few rows away from everyone else. It only took Kaia a second to place why he looked so familiar.

It looked like the captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins had tried to go for indiscreet, with a black sweater and jeans, a dark baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, but there was still something recognizable—for Kaia, at least—even in the way he was sitting. Kaia focused back on the ice, watching the zamboni go back and forth in straight lines, her cheeks tinged with red. She felt embarrassed for watching him, especially because it put her in line with the people that he was probably trying to hide from. He was famous, famous-famous, especially in Pittsburgh. If her life was anything like his, she knew that she probably wouldn't be able to leave the house.

As the game started, Kaia felt eyes on the back of her head, and glanced over subconsciously, making sharp eye contact with Crosby a few feet away. She looked away quickly, her heart dropping when she saw movement from the corner of her eye, a body moving closer to hers.

“You're not gonna run into me again, right?” He asked, smiling a little, and slid down onto the bench beside her. “Do you mind?”

Kaia shook her head, sliding down the bench to make room.

Sidney looked at the side of her face and then the ice, looking back after a second. “What brings you to the game?”

“My friend is the captain of the team,” Kaia emitted, looking at him briefly and then back at the ice, where the game was well underway. “Maggie Gaudreau.”

“Oh, you know Maggie?” A look of knowing came over Sidney's face. “I've been helping out with the team practices. She sent a letter to the Penguins when she was first starting the team—”

Kaia giggled a little, shaking her head. Nothing fit her friend more than the idea of sending a letter to the Pittsburgh Penguins. “Maggie would.”

“She's a nice girl,” Sidney offered then. “I'm sorry, I didn't get your name—”

“Kaia,” she said, and dumbly offered a hand, mentally cursing the awkward gesture even as she made it. “Cheramie. Kaia Cheramie.”

“It's nice to meet you,” Sidney said quietly. “Sidney—you can call me Sid, though, that's good.”

They fell into silence, both of them watching the game; Kaia, at least, feigning understanding and trying to ignore the feeling of the man sitting beside her, their shoulders hovering inches from each other. He leaned back on the bench, his leg pushing up against hers, and Kaia didn't move, her eyes trained on the ice below them.

~

Monday morning found Sidney once again on the University of Pittsburgh campus, sore after a Saturday night game against the Rangers. They had won by the skin of their teeth, squeezing in two winning goals in the last period. That morning, he spent most of the girl's practice on the edge of the box with one of the girl's official coaches, watching as they ran the drills that he had introduced them to a few weeks before. Maggie had asked if one of the Penguins coaches would spend a day working with the new team in exchange for what she had penned as “eternal love” almost two months before, and Sid had overheard it in passing. He wanted to help. And he still did, of course, but that Monday it was hard for him to focus on hockey for the first time in what could have been forever.

He was thinking about her. The blonde, the small one that he had invited himself to sit with at the girls' game the week before. Kaia. There was something about her that he just liked, though he didn't know what it was. When she collided with him, all clumsy and out of breath at seven in the morning, all he had seen was her eyes—big and blue—that had met his for a second and then looked away, drifting to everything but him. She wouldn't look him in the eyes—even when they had been at the game together, she had stared hard at the ice, or her hands. She didn't seem bothered when he sat next to her, and she didn't move away when he moved closer; she even maintained his horrible attempt at conversation, chatting about the weather and zambonis and other pointless shit that Sid kicked himself for later.

As the practice came to a close, Sid listened half-heartedly to the girl's coach finalize their schedule for the upcoming week, talking about games and practices in between. He was happy that he was helping them, mostly for the fact that he knew they needed it—or they had needed it. He watched the other girls file into the locker room as Maggie skated toward him, wearing just a pair of sweats and fleece coat.

“Good practice, huh?” She grinned at him as she sat down, starting to unlace her skates. She had been working with some of the younger players, trying to teach them some of the more complex drills Sid had told her about. “I think everyone is really starting to click with each other.”

Sid forced himself to focus, nodding as she spoke. “Yeah, I can see that. The defense is really coming together with the new drills you've been doing.”

“Yeah, I thought so too! It's so exciting.” She pulled one skate off her foot roughly and started on the other, letting the conversation drop as she worked on the laces.

“I think I met one of your friends at the game last week,” Sid said noncommittally, looking out over the empty ice.

Maggie didn't look up. “Oh yeah?”

He studied his hands, trying to sound nonchalant. “She said she knew you—Kaia, I think? She seemed pretty nice.”

Maggie looked at him curiously then, her eyebrows pulled together. “You sat with Kai?”

“Yeah,” he said, feigning casual as he leaned back against the Plexiglas wall of the rink. He didn't want to mention that they had only spoken a few words to each other at the beginning of the game, and again at half-time, or that he had literally knocked her off of her feet before that. “I feel bad, a bunch of people came over for autographs after the game and I—I kind of lost her in the crowd.”

“She came to find me,” Maggie said, smiling a little. “After that win, I mean. I think all your training is paying off, Coach Sid.”

At that, Sid laughed a little, shaking his head. “I don't know if it's me helping out or you guys knowing how to play hockey.”

The girl shrugged, getting to her feet. She was his height, a fact that both intimidated and impressed him—at 21, she seemed like she had something figured out that he, at 26, didn't.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, turning to look at him. “I'm actually going right now—Kaia has a game. It started like...” She glanced at the clock above them and winced. “An hour ago. It's almost over, I mean, but—you wanna come?”

“Really?” Sid's own excitement surprised him, and he bit it back with purpose, nodding slowly. “Sure, I'll go.”

They walked together toward what Maggie had called the “Chapman Field,” where Sid could see half-full bleachers and figures in dark uniforms chasing each other, deep in a sport that he didn't know much about. Maggie was chattering about her plans for the upcoming weekend—she was going to visit her boyfriend's family in Erie—and how excited she was that the hockey team had come as far as they did in the few weeks they had been seriously practicing. Sidney agreed; he was excited for them, too, always eager to watch good hockey be played by people who were passionate about it. As they came closer to the field, he searched for Kaia in the mix of players chasing after the ball, trying to find her blonde hair.

“She disappears on the field sometimes,” Maggie chirped, nudging him up further onto the bleachers. “She's so small, sometimes she just kind of—oh, there she is—with the ball—come on, Kai! Shoot!” She let out an exasperated groan when the ball went high over the net, sliding into a seat beside Sid. “She can play better than that.”

Sid side-eyed Maggie with a grin, his eyebrows raised. “You watch her play a lot?”

“I always try to get to her games,” Maggie replied easily. “She comes to mine, too. It's kind of a good balance, because I know shit about soccer.”

“Does she like hockey?”

Maggie shrugged. “I mean, she never complains about it—I never complain about soccer, either, I guess—but she didn't really know anything about it til we moved in together. She tries to get it.”

Sid nodded, turning his attention back to the field. He thought of how Kaia had so attentively watched the game with him a few days before, her whole body focused on the game being played in front of her. He saw her again on the field as she jumped up and headed the ball away, chasing after it a second later. They were winning three to nothing, and Sid wondered how much of that was because of Kaia—it seemed like she was always the first after the ball, her uniform dirty with grass and mud stains. Even on the field with other girls, it seemed like she was on the small side, always a few inches lower than the girls around her.

“She's good,” Sidney offered, looking at Maggie.

“She's great,” she replied, nodding. “Everyone is saying she'll get called up for the US women's team.”

Sid looked at her with big eyes. “Really? Does she want that?”

“I don't know,” Maggie said, a wavering in her voice catching Sid's attention. “She's not really sure what to do.”